Friday, August 17, 2012

We are living in an online world



Wow, its already week 3 of my internship… Time goes way too fast! I’m sure some people are wishing it were over however I am really enjoying it. It will be sad to leave. Yes, you have to wake up early to get there, and yes you have to sit in traffic on the way there, but the responsible feeling you get knowing that you have ‘work’ to get to is quite exciting. Half of the working world would be rolling their eyes at me right now, thinking ‘just give it a few years of full time work and you’ll see’.

Anyway, the one thing I love about this work is that there is never a day that’s the same. You can’t really plan exactly what tasks you have to do for the day, you only really know once you get there and see what needs to be done.

I have been writing quite a bit of content for their website and the best part about that is that you get to see it go up online. Unlike journalism, your name may be put as the directors or you may not get a by-line at all however it is nice to know that you wrote that and its up where anyone can view it. If you were a speechwriter, the person saying the speech gets the credit for his inspirational words. In a PR world you very much work as a team to develop content. Everyone has input, gives advise and feedback on how they would prefer to see something written. The feedback I get from my supervisor is really excellent. She comes from a writing background and therefore I appreciate everything she has to tell me in regards to my written work. I am very luck that she is so approachable and that I feel involved and included in everything.

It is too hard to describe everything I did so I wrote a list this week-
This week I:
-       Added events to the twitter timeline I am making (to keep their social media presence going)
-       I tweeted about 5 times on different things on the 32dsg twitter page. (I have been made an administrator of their Facebook page, twitter and one of their clients pages.  – I made Facebook comments on our page (Please like 32dsg page and NGALA, Emergence, oZAPP if you can!  
-       I wrote 2 blogs for their website in the blog section- One about Malcolm Bryce receiving the National Pearcey medal and one about AWARD school graduation. Check them out on http://32dsg.com/blog/
-       I worked with the Social Media Coordinator on a social media strategy for 32 dsg
-       I wrote up a list of companies similar to 32 dsg in WA to see what they are doing differently and where we could improve
-       I am preparing a few things that are coming up for us- there’s a few events that I will have to write some news pieces for and blogs (my to do list is getting bigger)

As you can see a lot of the things I do are social media based and website content based however everything these days goes online. Even our clients put our media releases up on their websites. It is nice to know that nothing we do in this business goes to waste. Everything gets used somewhere. For example I wrote an article that had more positives for one of our clients then 32 dsg so they said they would use it on their website instead.
Next week on Wednesday I will be going with the team to an event organised by 32 called Sharing Healthy Conversations which is a chance for carers and those with disabilities to share their thoughts on how they can better communicate. I have been given the job of being a scribe (writing down peoples answers to questions) but this is also a chance for me to understand how the event was organised and then carried out. It is also a chance for me to get all the information I need first hand for the news piece I will write for their website.

While doing all of this there is so much else to do in terms of the PR strategy I am trying to develop for them.

So much to do! But that’s exactly why it is such an interesting and enjoyable place to work. There isn’t a day where I’m holding out for 5pm so I can go home.

I hope your still enjoying your internships!

Thanks again for reading,

Martine. 


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Great blog post Martine. And I agree - there is definitely no such thing as a typical week in PR. Your internship sounds amazing by the way - you’re doing a whole raft of different things which is great experience-wise. It's also great to see you're using different social media and online platforms. Good luck with your event next week!

Unknown said...

I agree Martine, I'm loving the working life and there is never a day were I'm waiting for the clock to strike 5! Its almost the opposite on some days because you have so much work to do that you don't even realise its 5pm when it creeps up.
Your internship sounds really interesting and you must be doing really well to be asked to do all those tasks, it sounds like they really like your work, which is excellent. It's really exciting to use social media so much as it will be really useful for finding jobs in the future as almost every organisation these days are looking for employees that have online and social media compatibility.
Good luck scribing at the event coming up, I'm sure you will learn lots! I found it really useful when I had to be the scribe in important client briefings because you really listen and pick up some really interesting information. I also found it helpful to think of some key points that you want answered as a guideline to take notes from.

Hope you enjoy the rest of your internship!